


Paper Riches

by Septemberrie



Category: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (2018), The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society - Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-26
Updated: 2018-08-26
Packaged: 2019-07-03 00:52:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15807993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Septemberrie/pseuds/Septemberrie
Summary: I watched the movie, fell in love, read the book in 12 hours, watched the movie again, then wrote this. It takes place in the bookverse, where Juliet corresponds with Isola, Dawsey, Amelia, Eben, etc. for several weeks before deciding to visit Guernsey, and sends Amelia a copy of her Anne Brontë biography as proof of her authorship.Dawsey gets his first glimpse of the woman with whom he's been sharing his love of reading.





	Paper Riches

The sea breeze, if Dawsey Adams cared to notice, bore the scent of salt, foam, and decomposing seaweed, same as it always has. But as it is, Dawsey doesn’t make a point to notice the same air that’s sustained him for nearly four decades–not since the stench of death and starvation has seceded from Guernsey, departing with the German troops who conjured it. The only thought Dawsey gives to the ever-present wind is that it whips back and forth so, blowing his fringe constantly into his eyes, and so it must be time for Isola to attack it with her shears again.

He pushes his hair out of his vision as he winds his way through Isola’s garden, picking his path to avoid the jungle of herbs that nearly obscure the cobblestone walkway. He hears her shout before he even reaches her door, and the corners of his lips tug up into a cheerful smile. Isola, ever the eager, ever the hostess.

“Dawsey!” She wraps her arms around him in greeting, and Dawsey gently encircles her lean body in his arms. She smells of rosemary and sage, as usual, and she’s already babbling before he lets go.

“I’ve written her, of course, not four days ago. She’s truly a writer, now isn’t she? I feel as if I know her already, from your letters and her ones to Amelia. D’you think she’ll ever come calling?”

Dawsey’s usual response to Isola’s prattle is a hum and a nod. But this time, it fails him. The familiar swooping sensation commandeers his stomach, as it always does when the topic of Juliet Ashton arises, and he cannot bear to utter anything that would dismiss the conversation. “I dearly hope so,” he replies. It’s a fine line to walk, one that will prod Isola forward with the subject of Juliet, but not so far that she’ll notice his obsession.

Isola, having turned towards her drawing room, pauses at the lintel with one hand on the doorjamb. “You are corresponding with her too, are you not? I do hope you’re not frightening her off with your brooding reticence.”

“I do write,” Dawsey counters, with a little more force than necessary. How little Isola knew of the hours Dawsey spent at his writing desk, rehearsing the penmanship and the words to write before committing them to paper. How to seem as effortless as Juliet did, when her skill so far exceeded his own.

She smiles genially and rests one pale hand against his wrist. “Just needling you, Daws. How short are we going today?” She lifts her hand from his arm to his forehead and makes a scissor shape with her first two fingers, then squeezes his fringe between the “blades.” “Shall I lop it all off and be done with winter?”

He frowns, his pride slightly wounded by how quickly he’d fallen for her ruse, and he tilts his chin upward so that his bangs slip out from between Isola’s fingers. “Just a trim, or Kit will have my head.”

Isola laughs at that, a waterfall of giggles that, once rare, he’s heard more and more over the last year. “I’d forgot about that. Didn’t recognize you, did she?”

“No, and we shan’t do it again.” She turns back to her drawing room and gestures to the highbacked chair by the window, on which rests a patched and frayed tablecloth. While Isola busies herself with her tools, Dawsey crosses the room in two strides and unfolds the tablecloth. He sinks into the chair, facing the window, and ties two corners of the tablecloth around his neck.

He breathes out a long sigh as Isola’s comb drags across his scalp. Even during the Occupation, and even despite Isola’s chattering, he’s always found solace in the rhythmic motion of her hands in his hair, the snip of the shears, the lilt of her voice (he never took in a word she said, he just enjoyed the sound of a voice that wasn’t a barking Nazi or a squealing pig).

But this time, he doesn’t block her out. “What have you written her?” he asks, before she can launch into her daily gossip. “Juliet, I mean.”

“Juliet! I wrote all about the Brontë sisters, you know I love them so.” Dawsey smiles into his lap as Isola angles his head forward to trim the back of his neck. He has vivid memories of Isola’s florid monologues on their arcane genius. “Didn’t Amelia tell you? She’s written a biography of Anne Brontë. Her first work, before _Izzy Bickerstaff Goes to War_. I’m told it sold dreadfully, though I can’t see why. A true illumination of the least known sister, and so thorough I feel as though I could invite her for tea and never run out of things to talk about.”

He hides his smile at that, doubting that Isola would have trouble running out of things to talk about with a stump. “You’ve read it?” he asks.

“Of course, I begged Amelia to lend it to me as soon as she finished.”

“I want it next,” Dawsey says.

Isola’s shears cease clipping, and Dawsey slowly lifts his head. He feels the heat beginning to rise there–was he too obvious? Too plain that he was desperate to read her own words, her thoughts she felt so strongly she published them for the world to see? Too desperate to touch the child of her mind?

But if Isola notices, she doesn’t say anything. “I’ve it around here somewhere,” she says finally, and tips Dawsey’s head forward with one hand to resume cutting. “I promised it to Eben next, but he’s an even slower reader than you are.”

He doesn’t reply to that, partly from embarrassment and partly because it’s true. Slow, but sincere. That was how he was, and had always been.

The minutes tick by and Dawsey clenches his hands into fists beneath the tablecloth. It takes ages, but Isola finally finishes trimming his hair, and he obediently removes the tablecloth for her to shake out on the stoop while he rinses his hair in the washbasin outside. After a thorough dunking, she hands him the tablecloth to towel off the most of the damp, and then he follows her back inside.

He waits in the drawing room while she putters about in her bedroom to look for the biography. It’s cluttered, as usual, with herbs, upended flower pots, and two dozen vials of tonic in various states of cleanliness. He spies a blotter and shifts two spice containers of lavender to the side to look closer. _Miss Juliet Ashton, 23 Glebe Place, Chelsea, London S.W. 3._

A creak of the floorboards makes Dawsey look up to see Isola, book clutched tightly in two hands before her, like the deacon bearing the Holy Bible up the aisle to begin Mass. _“Anne Brontë: A Biography,”_ she announces.

Heart pounding, Dawsey reaches out and hefts the book from Isola. “Thank you,” he says. “And you’ve done a good job?” He runs his hands through his still-moist hair, and Isola nods.

“More handsome than ever, Daws.”

He flushes again at that, and merely nods and brushes past Isola to reach her front door. “Thanks, Isola.”

“You will share me any more of her letters, won’t you?” she asks, following him to the door.

“I will,” he promises, although only through a stab of what feels suspiciously like selfishness. He tries to bury it, try to rationalize that it’s not because there’s some aspects of Juliet he wants to keep for himself.

“Good day.”

He sets off down the path, this time far less concerned with foot placement, in his haste to be out of Isola’s line of sight. He hurries along the main road, disregarding the limp in his leg, until he’s halfway to his home and nearly out of breath. Then he stops, looks behind him and in front of him, but he’s utterly alone. His heart is still fluttering, and it feels almost the same speed as the book pages he flips through with one thumb. A hundred pages, maybe more, from Juliet. He feels as though he is the richest man in the world.

Pages flipped through, the book remains open in Dawsey’s hand, with only the back pages visible. His heart stops fluttering, and in fact feels like it’s stopped altogether. On the back side of the dusk jacket, a picture stares up at him.

Juliet.

It’s just a small square, hardly enough quality to make out her facial features, but it’s enough to strike Dawsey to the bone. She’s smiling up at the camera, which is perhaps the same direction of the sun because her cheeks are pushed up into her eyes with a squint. Her hair falls about her shoulders in sleek ringlets.

He gently traces his thumb along the curve of her head to the well of her shoulder. She can’t be older than he is. He feels as if his circulatory system has been replaced with warm oil heating him through, filling his body with a numb, happy throb.

Juliet.

He snaps to when he hears the wheels of a cart approaching. He hastily tucks the book into the back of his trousers as the heads of a horse team appear in front of him. It’s Eben, with the post.

“Dawsey!” he shouts when he recognizes him standing beside the road. “You weren’t home, and I wanted to give this to you myself.”

He beams down from the driver’s seat, Eli riding shotgun, and holds out a crisp white envelope.

Dawsey feels a stab of guilt at the concealed book in his possession that’s supposed to be in Eben’s hands, but it’s overwhelmed immediately when he recognizes the neat scarlet ink on the front of the envelope.

“Jul–Miss Ashton?” he catches himself, and reaches out to take the letter from Eben’s callused hands.

“The very same. I’m off to Isola’s now, but do share what she’s written at the Society tomorrow,” he says.

Dawsey barely hears Eben but manages a brief nod of acquiesce, still staring, almost disbelieving, at the letter in his hands. He barely hears the mail cart driving away, barely feels his feet as he saunters homeward. A letter from Juliet, and her book, and her picture.

When he reaches the top of the hill and sees his farm, he can’t help but break into a run, and then a grin. He can see Kit kneeling in the garden, pulling up carrots, with Amelia on a chair watching over her. The book and letter feel light as a feather in his hand. The richest man in the world.

**Author's Note:**

> Please consider dropping a comment if you enjoyed! Thanks, loves. xx


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